Jul 04 2008
Flight 93 Memorial Being Destroyed By Petty Stubborness
Updated Below
I have the honor of being grouped with some of the best bloggers in the world on a blog-burst call for action regarding the 9-11 memorial for flight 93. You can visit The Bigsibling Blog here, the site that called for this action.
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When the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 was unveiled in September 2005, these six high profile conservative bloggers were instrumental in raising the public protest that forced the Memorial Project to agree to a redesign. Charles Johnson stayed with the story until the summer of 2006, and Ace has done twolinks since 2005, but for the most part, these conservative heroes seem to have decided that the “circle of embrace” redesign is okay.
It is NOT okay. Architect Paul Murdoch described his original Crescent of Embrace design as a broken circle. The redesign is still described as a broken circle, and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was in the original design.
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Actually, I do not condone the design one way or the other, I sincerely thought the last round in 2005 fixed the problem. My original post is here, with the incoming calls for action from other bloggers filling up the comments section. The original design was a crescent, as the designer named it. Â It also was nearly identical to a Muslim Crescent, as can be seen in this design from 2005:
The problem appears to be the redesigned memorial did not go far enough to remove all key vestiges of the original offending design. Bigsibling has many design images that show the redesign effort to be a weak cover up, instead of what was needed: a complete redesign. (old design on left, ‘new’ design on right).
An animation shows just how little was changed from the first, clearly wrong-headed design to the current marginally changed one (click to enlarge):
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There is a good statement at Bigsibling Blog as to why there are breaks in the circle and what they are intended to represent:
The trees surrounding this “circle of embrace” are missing, or broken, in two places; first, where the flight path of the plane came overhead (which is the location of the planned memorial overlook and visitor center) and second, where the plane crashed at the Sacred Ground (depicted by a ceremonial gate and pathway into the Sacred Ground).
OK, these features make sense, and the crescent shape is diminished quite a bit. But the fact is the line of the plane and the impact zone are a small area in the circle – which makes the circle basically immaterial and irrelevant. The circle encompasses a lot of land that has little to do with the site. I am at a lost to understand why the circle is so important when the event it is meant to memorialize skims the outer rim.
While I may not be as concerned as others on the shape so much, the basic problem here is that the folks running this design effort forgot who it was for – the victims and their families. Instead of running a process that built consensus, they ran one which shoved one design and designer down the throats of many victims’ families.
The first design was a complete insult to the Americans who died at the hands of Islamist Terrorists (note: not ‘Islamic’). And the folks running the memorial KNOW THIS, which is why they attempted the redesign. There is no way an Islamic Religious symbol should cover the graves of these Americans. If any religious symbols should be visible it should be from the victim’s religions and note who belonged to which. I would wager the only dead Muslims on the site are the terrorist murderers.
If the memorial group realized their mistake then, then they should realize that they made a second mistake in not going back to the drawing board with the many other great designs they had in their hands. This stubbornness to hold onto the circle is just as bad as any issues (real or imagined) people have with the now glossed over crescent.
Whoever is running this thing probably should have been removed when the original design hit problems and the dissensions began. Clearly they need to be removed now, because this has turned into a monumental disaster led by bureaucratic ineptitude. One set of families is adamantly opposed to the designer and the basic design, while others are so fed up with the controversy they just want to get the whole thing over (article link):
Anticipating more protest against the Flight 93 National Memorial design during a meeting today in Somerset, family members of some of those aboard the flight held a news conference Friday in Pittsburgh defending the maligned memorial.
“Rather than standing pat and being quiet, we’re standing up and saying, ‘Enough,'” said Patrick White, vice president of the Families of Flight 93.…
“There’s no particular ownership of this shape,” she said. “… We felt confident with the notion that the void in the embrace was representative of loss.”
But Burnett, reached by phone in Minnesota, vehemently disagreed. He said a consensus was not reached, that he was among six people who voted against it and that he raised serious questions about Islamic symbolism.
“I spoke out about the symbols and tried to explain to them that the Islamists had been using those symbols for hundreds and hundreds of years,” Burnett said. “… It’s very pretty, but it doesn’t belong there where we lost 40 American heroes, including my son Tom.”
Now some are claiming the ‘crescent’ is not a symbol, and are hiding behind the bureaucratic BS line that nothing can be done now, that it is now too late:
More than 1,000 designs were whittled down to five by the first jury, made up of design professionals, family members and community members.
A second jury selected the design from among those final five.
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The family members said large changes to the design are out of the question, although alterations are expected as the conceptual drawings become schematic plans.
“I would be wary of making major modifications to a memorial that was selected using the process that was used,” Gordon Felt said. “We can’t satisfy everybody all the time.”
This is a bunch of crap. We can do lots of things, and the first one is to realize the original design, no matter how much some liked it, is just one of many possible designs and it needed to be tossed when the crescent controversy hit. There is always a clean sheet of paper – and they collected thousands of options which they have in hand to select from. The problem seems to be that some refuse to let go of their precious little crescent/circle and are not listening to other family members or other Americans upset by the fact we started this mess with a clearly named red-crescent.
Now the emotions are high and the backs are up and the thing is an unmitigated mess. This can be fixed, but it requires new people willing to bridge differences instead of promote their own views on others who are repulsed by those views.
The answer is to dump the current design and process, and use the 1,000 other entries to create some other concept – sans a circle. There is nothing sacred to America about a circle, unlike those who believe the crescent (aka a broken circle) was a license to kill 3,000 Americans on 9-11, and a license to plan to kill many more since.
Get a clue people, that vacuous circle of irrelevant land is not the sacred element of this memorial – the grave site is. Dump this and start over. Find some other shape to design around and this mess will be over. Remain stubborn and the memorial will be remembered for the bitterness in its development and not the people who died that horrible day in September.
BTW, I located the above article from this site on the memorial itself, which has other information for those interested. A PDF file on “The Bowl” portion of the memorial park can be viewed here.
Update: First off, there is a call for support for Mr. Burnett at the up coming meeting (sounds like a good day to travel to PA to see the memorial site):
Come to the August 2nd meeting
If you can make it to Somerset PA on Saturday August 2nd, come help Tom Burnett Sr. tackle the hijacker!
Secondly, I really begin to wonder about this memorial now. It seems incredibly oversized. I think memorials should be something you can take in, spending maybe a half day at most exploring. Beyond that it becomes a chore, and no memorial should be a chore.
Now, before people go all ballistic on me, I want to put this into context with my favorite memorial on the Washington DC Mall – The World War II Memorial:
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This memorial “honors the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the U.S., the more than 400,000 who died, and all who supported the war effort from home”. That is far more Americans, who also died for their country, than those who perished on Flight 93. The WW II National Memorial takes up less than a city block. I wonder how much of the Flight 93 Memorial is meant to be a legacy for those who perished, vs those building the memorial itself?
Another example, the 9-11 memorial at the Pentagon, which will be dedicated this September. It honors 187 deaths.
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Anyway, I still say the process tainted the current design and the country needs a fresh start.
Well Golly! Gosh! and Gee!
Thanks for mentioning it but why not state the key hair raising
1000 pound gorilla in the living room fact?
quote
In particular, the giant crescent still points to Mecca, and the repetition of this Mecca orientation in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial proves that the Mecca orientation is intentional. That makes the giant crescent a mihrab: the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built.
unquote
The geometry is critically explained here:
usual prefix ( no www ) then errortheory dot blogspot dot com
I’m avoiding the filters,
Everything you wanted to know about the terrorist memorial but
were afraid to say.
Science and politics – I highly recommend it.
Dave M,
I did not mention it because clearly the opening of the circle is due to where the plane crashed. But be that as it may, the entire effort is screwed up because the original design is not sacred – the site is – and those who tried to salvage it after the first round screwed up.
Who cares what is wrong with it? Dump it and start over.
The most eloquent memorials are often the simplest. These grandiose designs are created only to allow the committe to hijack the greatness of an event in order to impose a personal agenda on it.
The most fitting memorial would be similar to the memorial erected in ancient times to the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.
A single granite block at the site, with only these words inscribed:
“Go tell the Spartans, oh stranger passing by,
that obedient to their laws, here we lie.”
nothing else was needed then, or is needed now.
You are right, AJ. The WW2 memorial is the most stirring and beautiful in Washington DC. It brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. The Viet Nam memorial is the second most stirring. All those dead, wasted because the left dominated politics at the time.
I have a problem with the tower (so Islamic) and the glass blocks which also honor the terrorists. Forty passengers and crew and 4 terrorists. This whole farce is going to be remembered as a memorial to the terrosists and probably very few will visit it.
One of the rules was that no change could be made to the environment and this design is the only one that broke that rule.
All other designers were constrained by this rule but not Murdoch. You would think that if a great number of people objected to the design the committee would have second thoughts. I wonder why they don’t.
The general rule is to follow the money. Who is getting how much from whom to insist that this design is the only one? Does this “winning designer” get to keep the money if his design is rejected? Is it possible that our friends the Saudi’s are footing most of the bill? Has the committee sold it’s soul to for the Wahabi dollar like our Universities and colleges have?
I agree with you completely AJ. It is not necessary to get into the Mecca orientation of the crescent to see that this memorial design is inappropriate. Just the fact that the original giant crescent remains completely intact, after the Park Service said they would rescind it, is enough to demand that the design be scrapped entirely. (Tom Tancredo’s position.)
But given that the design is NOT being scrapped, that Mecca orientation becomes important. It is one of many mosque features in the crescent design, all manifest on the same epic scale as the giant Mecca-direction indicator. One is the minaret-like Tower of Voices, projecting an Islamic shaped crescent in the sky, with 40 wind chimes, explicitly representing the lives of our 40 murdered heroes, literally dangling down below.
The Crescent/broken-Circle of Embrace is in fact a terrorist memorial mosque. It is an attack on the United States, and with the hijacker still on track to stab his terrorist memorial mosque into the heartland of America, people need to know about it. (Simple guides for fact checking Islamic and terrorist-memorializing geometries, starting with source documents, here.)
August 2nd will indeed be a special time to visit the crash site: a chance to pay homage to those heroes by tackling our own hijacker.
AERawls,
I agree, but we need to point the finger of stubbornness where it belongs as well, at those who tried to paper over the original objections.
At this stage there are numerous reasons to start over and scrap the circle (broken and otherwise). A clean break will give all sides an opportunity to start fresh.
That is our objective. And you are right about needing to point the finger in the right place. One of the tactics of the crescent defenders is to charge Tom Burnett with trying to get a “do-over,” after he lost the jury vote and the crescent design won. But it is obviously the Park Service that is trying to get a monumental do-over. The American people rejected their decision to plant a giant Islamic crescent and star flag on the crash site, and they SAID they would change it, but are trying to get away with only disguising it. As you put it, their petty stubborness is what is allowing this travesty to continue.
BTW, who started the blog burst – BigSibling?
The blogburst was organized by Cao of Cao’s Blog. I author the weekly posts. The full list of blogbursts posts is listed down the right side of my Error Theory blog.
You and I actually have a lot of interests in common. I also blog about the global warming hoax, and about Democrat surrender efforts. You are my number one blog for terror war news and analysis. Awesome work. Much appreciated.
The blogburst was organized by Cao of Cao’s blog. I author the weekly posts. The full series of blogburst posts is listed on the right side of my Error Theory blog.
You and I actually have a number of similar interests. I also blog about the global warming hoax, and about Democrat surrender efforts. You are my number one read for terror war news and analysis. Awesome work. Much appreciated.
AERawls,
Many thanks. I wanted to make sure I linked to the originator, but was getting so many trackbacks I couldn’t figure it out.
In 2001 Islamofascist terrorists hijacked Flight 93 murdering 40 people on board. There were no Islamic people on that flight. There were Islamofascist terrorists. What possible reason could be there for including anything Islamic or anything even resembling an Islamic symbol into Flight 93 Memorial? Inclusion of Islamic symbols memorializes murderers who brought down the plane and is tantamount to spitting in the faces of victims and their families. United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked in 2001. Let’s not allow hijacking of Flight 93 Memorial in 2008. We, as Americans, owe it to the heroes of Flight 93!
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2001/09/2001-hijacking-of-flight-93-2008.html
aerawls:
I agree 100% with you. To me , The Mecca orientation is significant.
It is no accident or coincidence. I saw your material about the Isalmic sun dial and all the other stuff… Cmon how braindead are people today. The very fact that these people are so determined to keep thier design is reason enough to reject it for any and all reasons.
I am so fed up with people’s complacency.
And one other thing.. I disagree with the whole concept of this “Embrace” thing.. I dont want to be embraced.
I want to celebrate and honor the first Americans who killed the Jihadis.
I want to go to somethign that makes me think
“F*ck Islam. get it out of my country now”
We’re being medicated and coddled to our destruction.
But yeah.. I guess we shoudnt’ talk about crecents.. right AJ?
Lets object to circles.. because you know… no one will be offended by objecting to a circle.
But it’s not a circle.. It’s a freaking Islamic Crescent, pointing to the pit of hell in Mecca.
too bad if that offends people.
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives […]
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives […]
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives […]
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this, too, since he […]
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives […]
[…] thanks to AJ Strata for taking another look, and writing a long post on the fundamentally unchanged memorial. It looks like he might keep after this too, since he gives […]